


stasis

by ignitesthestars



Category: Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Romance, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 13:19:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7509913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignitesthestars/pseuds/ignitesthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nina knows about the fights at Hellgate. Week after week, she watches. And week after week, Matthias dreams of killing her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stasis

There’s nothing that Nina can do.

At least, there’s nothing she can do by being _here_. She’s a Heartrender - a _good_ Heartrender - but Kaz Brekker hadn’t been wrong about it being more difficult to get out of Hellmouth than in. What’s she going to do if he spins the wrong animal, if he fights too hard and too fast, if he ends up cut and bleeding on the floor of the arena?

Jump over the side and defend him? Use what talent she has to heal instead of hurt? He wouldn’t thank her. He would spit on her before he’d take her help, die with a smile on his face for it, and they would both still be in Hellgate.

He sees her the first time. She hadn’t planned on that, had begged any listening saints and his own gods to keep him out of the arena entirely. But the chill of his gaze scrapes right over her, into her despite the veil she’s wearing, and they just about kill him for trying to scale the walls to get to her.

It takes four men to put him down again. His roar of fury rings in her ears for weeks afterwards, the look of naked hatred twisting his features stamped into her visions. _More animal than man_ , one of the revellers had mused, and it had taken all of her willpower not to stop his heart. To twist through his veins and bend him to her will, to take her own rage and helplessness out on someone who deserved it. Who watched men die, and considered it sport.

 _More man than you_ , she thinks savagely, nails drawing blood from her palms. _You’re all beasts_.

She tells herself she won’t return. For his sake, if nothing else. They’d nearly killed him to bring him down, and it’s only due to some quick talking on Inej’s part that Brekker is able to get her the information that he survived the night. It’s not her job to contain his rage for him, but - doesn’t she owe him that much? If her presence provokes him, shouldn’t she make herself absent? 

In the end, Nina’s selfishness doesn’t surprise either of them. It’s weeks later when she returns, but she does return. His head, shaved, still beautiful, scans the crowd restlessly, a motion so practiced that she knows he’s been doing it since the last time. And this time his anger is all ice, and Nina is breathless in the wake of his stare like countless victims have been in the wake of hers.

He spins the wheel, lips peeled back from his teeth. Neither of them pay attention to what animal it lands on. He tears his eyes from her only when the lion charges out of the mouth of the tunnel.

Nina doesn’t breathe until it’s dead.

*

The witch is here again.

A perverse part of him is grateful for it. Her presence is the icy shock of the north sea, all consuming. Hatred runs pure through his veins, and he fights without thought, without panic or fear. Each neck he snaps is hers, each head he caves in--

But the fight ends. The fight always ends, and she always remains, sitting there with those demon eyes glittering darkly above her veil, hair caught away from the face he cannot see.

He remembers her mouth. He remembers all of her. He wants to scrub her from his mind, to reach in and tear out the parts of him she has touched, but every week he fights, and every week she is there.

He should have dropped her when the ice gave way. He should have left her to wander lost and alone in Fjerda, until a better _drüskelle_ than him could kill her. 

He should have let them both drown in the sea, and been done with it. A less miserable existence than this, with both his conscience and his convictions clear.

 _But I do not wish to die_. The voice is soft in his ears, sounds suspiciously, awfully like hers when he isn’t focusing. 

It is hatred pushing him on. A single-minded desire for revenge infusing him. He will leave this place, and when he does she will die like every animal he has been forced to end under her shadowed gaze.

But that voice remains. And when the ice clears from his mind and he is left alone in his cell with his winnings and his hatred, so does she.


End file.
